Should Coed College Dorms Cause an Uproar?

The Catholic University of America’s new president, John Garvey, received lots of press this week for his announcement that Catholic University will return to single-sex dormitories. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Garvey begins by relating that the initiative is an outgrowth of a series of conferences held at Catholic University to discuss his inaugural themes of intellect and virtue:

I believe that intellect and virtue are connected. They influence one another. Some say the intellect is primary. If we know what is good, we will pursue it. Aristotle suggests in the “Nicomachean Ethics” that the influence runs the other way. He says that if you want to listen intelligently to lectures on ethics you “must have been brought up in good habits.” The goals we set for ourselves are brought into focus by our moral vision.
“Virtue,” Aristotle concludes, “makes us aim at the right mark, and practical wisdom makes us take the right means.” If he is right, then colleges and universities should concern themselves with virtue as well as intellect.

Bringing topics like Aristotle and virtue ethics to the WSJ is commendable, but Garvey is on slippery ground when transitioning from normative claims to empirical ones:

Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences.

I know it’s countercultural. More than 90% of college housing is now co-ed. But Christopher Kaczor at Loyola Marymount points to a surprising number of studies showing that students in co-ed dorms (41.5%) report weekly binge drinking more than twice as often as students in single-sex housing (17.6%). Similarly, students in co-ed housing are more likely (55.7%) than students in single-sex dorms (36.8%) to have had a sexual partner in the last year—and more than twice as likely to have had three or more.

Garvey’s attempt to marshal social science data, in an effort to prove that single-sex residences will create a more virtuous student body, raises lots of questions about the use of empirical studies: might there be a selection bias, with students who choose single-sex housing (or the few colleges who only offer segregated dorms) already inclined toward less destructive behavior? But the technical objections aside, advocates of traditional norms ought to ask whether relying on social science data is the best approach for making their case. Cherry picking this kind of data is always dangerous, not least because one’s opponents will sooner or later find another study or revise the methodology to skew the results in their favor.

Further, it seems dubious that simply placing young men and women further apart will miraculously lead to acquisition of more virtuous habits. Anecdotal evidence from my own days as a resident assistant in the halls at Catholic suggests that the conventional wisdom Garvey claims to destroy — “that young women have a civilizing influence on young men” — is often true in practice.

One academic year I proctored an entire building full of young men, and they nearly destroyed the place: setting furniture on fire, breaking windows, and urinating everywhere. The next year the same building was occupied by males on the first floor and women on the second level (Catholic University has never run truly “coed” halls, but rather separation by floor). The partially integrated residence was far more peaceful and conducive to serious study.

My short Catholic University student life career aside, I think Garvey’s decision, for other reasons beyond what is quickly becoming hackneyed social science data, may nonetheless be correct: sex differences are real and truly coed dormitories (with the coed bathrooms of some universities) are part of a larger effort to create a gender-blind society; it’s a good idea for traditionalists to push back on this trend using whatever institutional levers they control. Further, single-sex residences hold the potential for creating a more virtuous and elevated learning environment. But unlocking the possibilities will require many additional steps to habituate students in the Aristotelian “habits” Garvey admires. I’m pessimistic that the largely indolent bureaucracy of any modern university — even one as good and well-intentioned as Catholic’s — will be able to achieve such a widespread change in institutional culture, let alone individual hearts and minds.

Even a formal commitment to virtue education might not be enough. A deep moral transformation might first require, as philosopher John Haldane alluded to at President Garvey’s symposium, a change in the hearts of the university’s faculty and student body:

Catholicism is not first and foremost about sexual ethics, or abortion, or liturgy, or justice and peace, or environmental stewardship. Rather it is about coming to know, to love and to serve God. Perhaps the rest follows, but it follows and does not lead, and nor is it an acceptable substitute for faith. That was the mistake of Pelagius: to believe that we can be saved by moral endeavor.

May John Garvey and Catholic University be given the grace they will need as they chart a new course toward the integration of intellect and virtue.

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8 Responses to Should Coed College Dorms Cause an Uproar?

This harks back to the culture war that Pat Buchanan spoke about at the famed GOP convention in the 90’s.
When recreation sex is considered normal, and popular culture promotes sterility then the role and primacy of the family is destroyed. This is what Pope John Paul II has called the modern “Culture of Death,’ where sociopaths like Dr. Kevorkian are lionized. Culture is decisive, over politics, and economics. Reforming such a society, even if possible, will take several generations.

Agreed that the study cited was rife with problems. I’m glad you’ve made the case, though, that co-ed dorms are part of the larger “gender-neutral” push from the neo-marxist left.

Christian theology aside (since I’d rather not go into the works-based issue with Catholicism), Western society has long recognized the difference between instilled virtue and inherent virtue. To become inherent, virtue must be instilled much earlier in life than in college. Thus, rules will fail when the hearts and minds of the governed are so thoroughly resistant. (Rules then become a way of lessening depravity rather than eradicating it.)

I agree with Mr. Peterson that this is a cultural/societal problem. Of course, reform is much more difficult because this problem is cyclical. Parents who are raised in a morally lax culture won’t instill more virtue in their children, but rather less.

What a joke. I spent five years at Michigan State, and had a girlfriend who lived in an all girls dorm for two years. I became good friends with a number of other males who regularly spent the night there. The dorm was jokingly referred to as “The Virgin Vault,” and the cafeteria was regularly a quarter filled with men.

Young people away from home, surrounded by other young people, are going to be sexually active. Statistics be damned.

“Anecdotal evidence from my own days as a resident assistant in the halls at Catholic suggests that the conventional wisdom Garvey claims to destroy — “that young women have a civilizing influence on young men” — is often true in practice.”

My college’s freshman dorms were co-ed, with the exception of one female-only dorm available upon request. We were all chuffed by the administration’s confidence in our worldliness and maturity – until one of our RAs pointed out that the policy existed mostly to minimize property destruction by “boys being boys.”

Anecdotally, I don’t think there was any more or less sex going on than one would have found at a college with single-sex dorms. Seeing my neighbor’s rumpled, puffy-eyed, pillowcase-imprinted face in the halls first thing in the morning did nothing to improve his sex appeal, and I suspect the feeling was mutual. And FWIW, I also felt physically safer having guys in the building.

I’m sorry but why do we do tolerate such behavior? Go back to what he said. He proctored a building full of young men for a year and they nearly destroyed the place, setting furniture on fire, breaking windows, and doing more disgusting things. Excuse me but was the word “expell” in the vocabulary of the school administration regarding such behavior? Did either the writer or the administration consider imposing minimal standards of behavior on those kids? Why on earth was such behavior tolerated by either the school or the people paying the freight for the kids being there?

I and my wife are responsible for putting several kids through school and trust me, any of our “kids” behave like this, it’s the last semester they’ll go to school on our money. Being in college is not a right, it’s a privilelege and these are kids we’re talking about, kids who for the most part are there because someone else is paying for it. In this country we indulge kids way too much. They want to misbehave, let them do it on their own money. And given the current state of the economy, “Animal House” may be fun to watch, but if my “kids” want to act like that they won’t do it on MY money.

Silly rabbit! Sex is for kids. What we need to do is educate our young children about sex and love from an early age, like those commie pinko socialist Europeans do. Maybe then we would have their low rates of teen births and abortion. But the idea of trying to unlearn lifetimes of initiation into our sexual customs (as demonstrated through our media) by reinstating same sex dorms, punishing lapses and, most ridiculous of all– attempting to treat them as some kind of tractable animals or pets who can be trained not to have sex- is absurd beyond discussion– at least in this country and where I live. The comment by Pat on June 17 is particularly reprehensible. You go guy. Kick them out of school because they fall in love on YOUR dime. Go ahead. After they pick your nursing home, and your Klingon nurse, you may never see them again.